CLIFTON (CLIF) and DOROTHY BUNDY (BUNDY/D.B.) POTTER

A Lynchburg native, Clifton Potter graduated from E. C. Glass High School.  He then went to Lynchburg College [now University of Lynchburg], which changed the course of his life. On 18 September 1960, he met Dorothy Bundy Turner on a bus tour of Baptist churches in Lynchburg. The next day they found themselves sitting next to each other in French class, and their friendship began. After graduating from LC with a B.A. in History, he received his M.A. in History from the University of Virginia (1964) and continued to his doctorate (1970). In 1965, he joined the LC faculty, where he remained until his retirement in 2019, having served his alma mater for 54 years.

In June of 1966, Clif and Dorothy Bundy married; he was a Fulbright Fellow, and they spent their year-long honeymoon in Oxford [UK]. Two Oxford sabbaticals followed in the 1970s and 80s, and their son Edmund would experience life as an English schoolboy, the last time on his own at Rugby. Over the last half-century Clif devoted many hours to Peakland Baptist Church, the Boy Scouts of America, the Holocaust Awareness Project of Central Virginia, the Lynchburg Museum System, Historic Sandusky, and the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.  In addition to books in their respective fields, he and Dorothy Bundy have written several histories introducing Lynchburg to the general public.

  Dorothy Bundy was born in Waynesboro, VA and named for her mother.  Since there were already three Dorothys in First Baptist Church (including two unrelated Dorothy Turners), she was called by a double name.  At Lynchburg College history repeated itself, with three Dorothys in her dorm. So, Bundy became her LC name, and at this point she will answer to almost any variation thereof. After graduating from LC, she received an MA in History in 1966, married five days later, and went to the UK in September. Their Oxford house, built on the site of the old city moat, was mostly unheated.  Fortunately, the library where she and Clif spent much of their time, had central heating—to protect the books!  Their son Edmund was born in 1969, and for fourteen years D.B. was a stay-at-home mom, which she truly enjoyed.

In 1983, Dorothy Bundy began her teaching career, first at RMWC [now Randolph College] and Central Virginia Community College’s history departments, and then LC, continuing at the latter until her retirement in 2017.  When LC gave her a leave of absence to pursue a PhD at UVA in the 1990s, she and Edmund shared a Charlottesville apartment; he was working on an MA in Architectural History.

Graduate school was much more fun the second time around, with a car and no dorm rules.  Bundy’s dissertation focused on the cultural influence of Mozart and his music in the United States, prior to the Civil War.  Her Mozart studies led to a book and travel in Austria and Germany. Thanks to two Mozart conferences in Nevada and New Mexico, the Potters also discovered the American southwest, and its Native American culture and art.

Like Dorothy Bundy and Clifton, Edmund is a college professor (despite their efforts to dissuade him), and a museum curator. He and his first wife Rachel have two teenage sons, Eric and Elliott.  He is now married to Brenci Patiῆo, professor of Spanish at Baldwin University.  In an interesting turn of events, they live in Waynesboro, only about two blocks from Dorothy Bundy’s old home.